Mask Off at the Mask Factory

By Joan Summers  |  May 14, 2020 | 10:00pm
NewsPolitics
Mask Off at the Mask Factory
Image:Getty

On a visit Thursday to Owens & Minor Inc, a medical equipment distribution center, Trump would not allow himself to be upstaged by the vice president’s acquiescence to widespread mask-wearing criticisms. Surrounded by men in masks, all looking at the boxes of masks surrounding them, Trump toured yet another mask facility without a mask.

Photos from the event are almost too ridiculous to be believed. The Hill reports that the distribution center has shipped “millions of N95 masks, surgical gowns and gloves to hospitals around the country.” In photos, the stocked shelves are clearly on display, as Trump and his entourage forgo social distancing guidelines on their tour of the warehouse.

Image:Getty

I simply cannot stress how many boxes of masks there are in Owens & Minor’s distribution center. There have to be, at least, a million masks in this photo alone. I’m not a scientist, nor am I a mathematician, but that estimate feels true and correct. Yet there Trump is, without a mask! How many staffers in the White House have tested positive at this point? I’m beginning to lose count.

Image:Getty

It’s unsurprising that outside the factory, photographers and accompanying reporters noted crowds of un-socially distanced Trump supporters. They weren’t wearing masks either—how am I even supposed to riff on this? A mask-less protest outside a mask factory where the maskless president visited to congratulate workers on shipping out lots of masks.

I didn’t just hit my head especially hard this morning, banging it against my computer screen, and dreamed this delusion up, right? This actually happened. That isn’t a rhetorical question. This actually happened—again. I keep telling myself that, and it doesn’t get any less ridiculous. [The Hill]

Feminism won, everyone. More Republican women may be running for office in the upcoming election than ever before in history. Great! Let the bad bitch CEOs and anti-choice protestors and religious zealots and anti-vaxxers rejoice. It’s time for Girl Power!

NBC News reports that “more GOP women than ever before” are eyeing prospective campaigns in 2020. Among them? Investment bankers, prosecutors, entrepreneurs. Some, like Valerie Ramirez Mukherjee, said they want to prove you can “be a Republican and be considerate and kind and diverse.” Others, like former “foreign affairs official” Anne Smith, feel the Republican Party is “losing women voters, and it doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.”

So, how will we be celebrating this huge achievement in women’s history? Perhaps we should hit Kelly Loeffler up for a ride on that private jet. A ski vacation at Sarah Palin’s Alaskan abode? It’s still snowy up by the North Pole, I think. I hear Megyn Kelly is great at parties. And Betsy Devos, I’ve been told, tells the funniest stories about girl-bossing all over the national education budget. We might even squeeze some late-night slumber party gossip out of Meghan McCain—she does have the best celebrity friends. I’m sure there’s a Republican senator or aide somewhere whose family owns a champagne producer. Let’s get tipsy and live it up, ladies! Momentous accomplishments in women’s rights simply don’t come around as often as they used to. [NBC News]